Page 57 of Take Her

“In what?” I asked. He shook his head like it didn’t matter.

“How many guys have you slept with?”

I stared at him again, aghast that he was asking me that in broad fucking daylight. “Five,” I said, as he eyed me contemplatively. I’d picked an arbitrary number, so it’d make it sound like I’d had more experience?—

“Think again,” he pressed, apparently seeing right through me.

“Three,” I spitefully confessed. “But I’ve had a lot of sex,” I said, because that was true, it was just that most of it hadn’t been consensual. I bit my lips before I could make any manic laughter, and closed my eyes briefly to center myself.

I was not letting my fucking uncle ruin this for me.

“You okay?” he asked, when I opened them again.

I checked in with myself and released a tense breath. “I guess I just expected there’d be more foreplay.”

“If foreplay was a priority, you shouldn’t have run into me at a sex club,” he said, at an entirely normal volume, and even though I knew no one else was listening, there were kids just one table over. “What did I tell you?” he asked, at an even louder volume, snapping me out of my panic. Some people did look over at that, and he must have known it—it was just that he didn’t care.

And I—I didn’t even know anymore. This whole situation was so strange, it was hard to think back—but then I remembered him standing above me in his office, telling me I couldn’t be embarrassed again unless he told me to. “I’m sorry, sir,” I said, contrite.

He made a dismissive growling sound. “Don’t ever say that to me again, either.”

“What?” I asked, in a high-pitched voice, as the waitress brought our drinks.

“I’m beginning to wonder if you might be deaf,” he said, when she was gone again.

I grit my teeth together. “And why can’t I say I’m sorry?”

“How many times have you said ‘I’m sorry’ in your life?” he asked, but it was clear it was rhetorical as he lifted his hand up a decent height. “You know how many times I’ve said I’m sorry?” he asked—and I shook my head rather than answer him. “Maybe this much,” he said, cutting the distance of his first hand in half by four-fifths, hovering his palm just above his silverware. “So you’re done with that, too. You’ve used them all up.”

I didn’t know whether or not to find his comment brash or asinine—I supposed it depended on whether I wanted to put my trust in him or not.

“At the age of twenty-three? That seems very young.”

“I was out of fucks by the time I was sixteen. You’ll get used to it, trust me.” He grinned again, wolfishly, and then leaned forward with a dangerous intensity. “You are what you are now. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Clearly you don’t know me,” I murmured, looking down.

“Yet,” he said, that one word clear as a bell—and it rang me. I lifted my gaze to his and didn’t know if I should be frightened or ecstatic; all I knew was that everyone else in the entire restaurant had just melted away, and it felt like he and I were the only ones in the room. “You don’t drink or do recreational drugs?” he asked. I shook my head quickly, as he went on. “Don’t start, then. I always want you clear headed around me. For my part, you might make me start smoking again, but no more than that.”

I blinked at him. “What are we doing here, Rhaim?” I asked, because I wanted to know precisely.

“Setting down ground rules in neutral territory.”

“Oh,” I breathed.

He nodded, slow and deep. “I need you to know some things, Lia,” he said. “Because this is the part where you still get to walk out. It’s not too late—you and I can go back to being whatever the fuck it is your father wants for us to be. Do you understand me?”

He seemed so intense I felt the need to joke. “Let the record show I’m here of my own free will.”

His eyes narrowed at that. “Take things seriously, little girl, or else.”

I inhaled to apologize, and then caught myself. “Yes, sir,” I said instead, and the corners of his mouth twitched up.

“Fast learner,” he said. “All right. You wanted Corvo. I’m going to give it to you, but at a price.”

I sat up straighter. Whatever it was, I would pay it. “Which is?”

“Pleasing me.”